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Video overviews of some of these games will be published on the BGG Express YouTube channel and the individual game pages before the end of February 2020. Ideally we'll get game listings for everything into the BGG database, too! In the past I've leaned toward holding on to images until those listings are in place, but then I'll discover years later that I never published certain images since I can't have my eyes on everything, no matter how much I try. Better to publish now, then move things later.
Note that the components and artwork shown in these images is non-final and not necessarily representative of what you'll find in print once these games appear on shelves.
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Tiny Turbo Toys (name not final) from Horrible Guild was the first game that we saw at Spielwarenmesse 2020, with this being a racing game in which each player has a sliding-tile puzzle, and the middle two rows of tiles in your puzzle determine your actions during each round. As in many racing games, lots of track pieces are included in the box so that you can customize courses and adjust the playing time to whatever suits you.
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These three titles have all been previewed previously, the latter two at Spielwarenmesse 2019 in far less finished states. Horrible develops many games concurrently, so
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In addition to the already announced Similo: Myths, in Q3 2020 Horrible plans to release Similo: Animals, which will be a nice addition given that it eliminates the straightforward clue-giving possible in other versions of the game that indicates the chosen character is a male or female.
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Speaking of HABA, here's the sole photo I took in that booth. (When I ran around on Sunday for hours taking photos of all the games we had seen, I didn't want to spend an extra twenty minutes hoofing it back to Hall 3. Sorry!)
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Yes, in 2020 HABA will release a Christmas-themed version of Animal upon Animal, with this version coming in a metal tin, which is HABA's custom for special releases.
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At SPIEL '19, Finnish publisher Tactic released the strategy game Canal King Brugge, and for 2020 it's spinning off that title into a new game line — Game Storm Studio — aimed at older players as the Tactic audience is primarily either children or party gamers. I didn't get overviews of these titles as I discovered them late Sunday afternoon while taking photos, but ideally we'll get them in the database before too long.
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You might notice that each game has a small monitor next to it. Each monitor has a motion-control sensor in it, and when you approach the game, it turns on and starts playing an introductory video about the game, which is a great set-up that retail store owners might consider using themselves. Fantasy Flight Games had a marketing program that supplied videos to run on tiny monitors, but (based on my limited experience with them) those videos ran constantly, which would probably drive store clerks batty.
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I previously posted an overview of titles coming from Ravensburger and alea, but here's one I missed showing off:
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Ravensburger didn't reveal anything other than a box for Minecraft: Builders & Biomes – Expansion — and a mock-up box at that! — but they had done the same for the Minecraft: Builders & Biomes base game in 2019, so no surprises there. When you work with licensed games, sometimes you run with what you're allowed to do and have to be satisfied with that.
While at the Ravensburger booth, we filmed something with Wolfgang Kramer — in addition to shooting an overview of his upcoming game Jubako, co-designed with Michael Kiesling — so I took the opportunity to have him sign my beat-up and shrunk-down copy of Abluxxen, which I had previously named one of game highlights from the 2010s.
Lincoln took the opportunity to say that Big Boss is his favorite Kramer design, and Kramer said that it was also his favorite design. I love that game, too, and paid far too much for a copy, but it's a bit harder to fit in your travel bag compared to Abluxxen!
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